Tag: banks

Bank unions Saturday called for a nationwide strike on December 26 to protest the proposed merger of Bank of Baroda, Dena Bank and Vijaya Bank. The government had in September approved the merger of the three public sector lenders. The strike will be organised by the United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU), an umbrella body of nine employee and officer unions. The government and the concerned banks were moving ahead with their decision for amalgamation and hence it was decided to give the call for strike, All India Bank Employees Association General Secretary C H Venkatachalam said. All unions under UFBU will participate in this strike call, said Ashwani Rana, vice president of the National Organization of Bank Workers. Following the government nod, the respective boards of these banks gave the...

By Vrishti Beniwal and Shruti SrivastavaThe Indian government will push its central bank to ease lending restrictions for some weak banks and review rules governing its functioning at a board meeting next month, people with knowledge of the matter said. The members, including government nominees, will press for some of the weak banks to be removed from the so-called prompt corrective action list, particularly those ones that have been consistent in recovering outstanding debt, the people said, asking not to be identified as the plan is not public. There are 11 state-run lenders on the list, which curbs their ability to lend. The proposals suggest another potentially tense board meeting on Dec. 14 amid an ongoing dispute between the Finance Ministry and the central bank over a number of iss...

MUMBAI: The 11 state-run banks, which are under the Reserve Bank's prompt corrective action (PCA) framework, has seen a 400 basis points increase in their share of retail loans at 19 percent of the system in the four years ending September 2018, says a report. The Reserve Bank began to place state-run banks under PCA framework first time in September 2016, when their NPAs soared beyond the regulatory tolerance levels. But the present data is for the period between March 2015 when their retail share was only from 15 percent and September 2018 when it rose to 19 percent, according to American brokerage Jefferies. A report by the brokerage said Friday it is often misreported that banks under PCA aren't allowed to grow (gross loans have indeed fallen 10 percent since March 2015). "Yet their re...

Close to Rs 50,000 crore moved out of banks as Indian accountholders withdrew wads of cash ahead of Diwali. According to data released by the RBI, currency in circulation shot up to Rs 20.2 lakh crore as on November 9 — an increase of Rs 49,418 crore in the Diwali week, the highest growth ever outside the demonetisation period. The biggest weekly increase in currency in circulation was in the week ending January 13, 2017, which saw an additional Rs 52,786 crore flow out of banks as currency presses worked overtime to replace demonetised notes. After demonetisation, the year-on-year growth in currency in circulation had been negative for 53 weeks. The currency in circulation recovered to pre-demonetisation level of nearly Rs 18 lakh crore in March this year. While there were indications tha

MUMBAI: State-run lenders require an urgent Rs 1.2 trillion in capital in the next five months and government will have to take a bulk of the tab due to the weak market valuations of these NPA-saddled banks, says report. This is a little more than double the budgeted Rs 53,000-crore of capital infusion for the current fiscal year, Crisil senior director Krishnan Sitaraman said in a report Tuesday. If government decides to meet this need, this will put further pressure on the fiscal maths, thus its ability to meet the 3.3 percent fiscal deficit target for the current fiscal year. Already government has used up over 95 per cent of the deficit target or the market borrowings as of October end. The report comes even as government is asking the Reserve Bank to lower the minimum capital requirem...